


illuminate as you fall

by Miaou Jones (miaoujones)



Category: Free!
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Gen, Rain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-07
Updated: 2016-06-07
Packaged: 2018-07-12 23:41:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7128740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miaoujones/pseuds/Miaou%20Jones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a hand catches him before he knows he’s falling and haru doesn’t fall.</p>
            </blockquote>





	illuminate as you fall

**Author's Note:**

> written for saso 2016, for this prompt: "remember when we agreed that we were looking at something beautiful, but you were looking at the sky and i was looking at you?"
> 
> * * *

the sky is thick with overfull clouds; thick but not dark, the sun still shining, glimmering in the spaces between the clouds, brilliance breaking through and drifting down. it’s going to be a sun shower. haru inhales, breathing the moisture-thickened air as deep into his lungs as it will go, holding it for a stroke, even though he’s not moving through water. holding it for a heartbeat, then.

when he’s taken all he can from that breath, he lets it out. he keeps looking up at the sky, waiting for the clouds to open, for the raindrops to illuminate as they fall through the sunlight…

“haru.” a hand catches him before he knows he’s falling and haru doesn’t fall. he looks over at makoto, who lets go as haru centers on the sidewalk, away from the curb. 

makoto smiles and haru tips his face to the sky again, just in time for the first raindrop. his lashes catch it, filtering it and guiding it away from his eye, onto his skin. more drops follow, sparkling through sunbeams, sparkle and splash on his skin.

face to the sky, haru parts his lips to drink in the sunlit rain, swallowing the air the rain rides on. “beautiful,” he murmurs between sips of the rain dazzled air.

“yeah,” makoto says.

he must have looked down from the sky first because when haru glances at him, makoto is already turned to him. he doesn’t smile this time when he looks away and haru understands: some things are too beautiful to smile about. he doesn’t smile either as he looks up into the gorgeously wet sky again.

the rain slows, not so much stopping as dissipating, absorbed back into the air. it came down long enough to soak haru and, he sees as he glances over again, makoto too. not that haru thought the rain was coming only for him; that’s not how geophysics works. so of course makoto is wet too, as is the ground beneath them and everything else they pass.

the sun, undissipated, dances over the fallen rain, making it shimmer; making everything the rain has touched shine.

the rain didn’t look heavy as it fell but it seems it had enough weight to plaster strands of makoto’s hair to his face; he lifts a hand and pushes them back, fingers gliding through before coming free. he catches haru’s gaze and, as his hand falls to swing easily at his side, makoto returns the gaze and smiles.

haru doesn’t smile.

their footfalls echo one another, splashing through newborn puddles as they go.


End file.
